this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 7 points 6 days ago

Click bait headline.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 days ago

It’s never been a better time to switch to !linuxphones@lemmy.ca

[–] Atmoro@lemmy.world 93 points 1 week ago (2 children)

PostmarketOS can't happen fast enough

LineageOS, & GrapheneOS hopefully will still be good for now

[–] Polderviking@feddit.nl 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

If google where to close android it'll undoubtedly be forked. Pretty sure the likes of Graphene and Calyx will be fine for the forseeable future.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

and google will be doing everything they can to grow incompatibility and make maintaining an open fork impossible. don't forget that google employs devs for pay, but fork maintainers are doing it as a hobby, out of passion, while already working somewhere. It's a bit similar to matrix, its homeservers and clients. the spec and the software evolves slowly, but its still too fast for alt implementations

[–] Polderviking@feddit.nl 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Google can only do that if they can maintain grip on the market. This requires the likes of Samsung, who also contribyte to android, to move with them to their then propiatary solution. Google is not going to win this just with their Pixels.

Google closing android would ruffle a lot of feathers so it definitely wouldn't be a given they would come out of that on top.

Apple has no problem existing outside of Google's sphere of influence. And honestly if the android market would split and you'd get legitimately google-less phones with large app stores that google doesn't control that would be fairly beneficial if you ask me.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This requires the likes of Samsung to move with them to their then propiatary solution. Google is not going to win this just with their Pixels.

I don't see why samsung wouldn't accept this change. do they make use of the AOSP project? if they do, wouldn't they be able to make a deal with Google to have access to the code?

[–] Polderviking@feddit.nl 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I mean. They could go with google and most ideally change nothing, or stay with the open source project and try to cut out a slice of the appstore pie for themselves.

[–] Senseless@feddit.org 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As a GrapheneOS user I'm with you on this. Hopefully this won't negatively impact the development of GOS. I feel like it will though.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago

I wonder how this will affect Ubuntu Touch.

[–] EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 83 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It's important to note that this is them moving in-development branches/features "behind closed doors", not making Android closed source. Whenever a feature is ready they then merge it publicly. I know this community tends to be filled with purists, many of whom are well informed and reasoned, but I'm actually totally fine with this change. This kind of structure isn't crazy uncommon, and I imagine it's mainly an effort to stop tech journalists analysing random in-progress features for an article. Personally, I wouldn't want to develop code with that kind of pressure.

[–] thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Why would you want people to test your software on all sorts of random hardware when you could just pay people to test it on a smaller scale!

[–] EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

C'mon, that's what PR's, RCs, and betas are for

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Lots of people make a PR very early though, just to keep track of development and have a space to jot down thoughts and ideas, and get feedback during.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 2 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Would you really want everyone in the world looking at every end of day commit before you've refactored it into something vaguely passable?

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 days ago

Would you really want everyone in the world looking at every end of day commit before you've refactored it into something vaguely passable?

Honestly, it has been fine. Almost nobody really pays attention to anything they don't care about, and most people who do care tend to be pretty helpful.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Heck, I'll sometimes make a wip.diff file and scp it back and forth between work and home machines just because the code feels not ready for other eyes.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

While I'm way too lazy to do that myself, I respect you for the skill and effort.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

😅 it's not often nowadays, I'm not fresh meat at work anymore so I feel less insecure these days lol

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Who tf looks at feature branches unless it's particularly relevant to them or they're reviewing a PR?

It's not like they merge half-baked features straight to master every day lol

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

So what exactly are we losing?

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

You can't review changes in the next build before it's actually released?

Currently you can still keep up with the master branch. PRs are merged a fair bit more often than new builds are made.

Ah and nobody outside of Google can contribute to Android development. I believe up till now if you found a bug you could fix it and open a PR? No?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

When that code is used on devices all over the world for many very important tasks, yes.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 1 points 5 days ago

Why do you feel that Vs when merges happen?

[–] balder1991@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Not only that, the Android Police article mentions they had a lot of trouble merging the internal branches and the public branches, so I’m guessing as time went on they’ve diverged more and more.

I'm not a fan, but I understand it and am generally okay with it. I still wish it all happened in the open like Linux.

[–] gianmarco@feddit.it 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Boiling the frog, slowly... As more of these terrible decisions keep stifling Android up to a point where it becomes just a vessel to Google's proprietary garbage (as it has been the case for many years already for a lot of things), it should be a wake up call for mobile Linux to keep improving and do it faster.

[–] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 34 points 1 week ago

From AOSP to AP

[–] doeknius_gloek@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't know anything about Android AOSP, so I found this clarification important:

This does not mean that Google is making Android a closed-source platform, but rather that the open-source aspect will only be released when a new branch is released to AOSP with those changes, including when new full versions or maintenance releases are finished.

[–] dbkblk@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

Yes, there will still be the aosp repository as open-source. It will have some lag, but still there. Thus said, Google has moved a lot of things into the Google Play services over the years (closed sources). So, who knows what's next! Let's praise that some companies inject money / devs into postmarketos!

With this happenning and apple getting extorted to accept third party apps it would be funny if they switch places

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Surprised pikachu face... they've been closing Android bit by bit every year, everybody knows their real intent is to turn it into closed source.

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

They are closing nothing here. It's the equivalent of the developer doing local commits and delaying the public pull request.

[–] nuko147@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I trust them. They showed that they only care for their customers and not for maximizing profits.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] nuko147@lemm.ee 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Google's main goal is privacy and costumers happiness, Trump's is democracy and Putin's is peace.

[–] HeyLow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You must be from a parallel universe where Google actually followed through with their "Don't be evil" motto.

Here Google scrapes every last atom of data from all of its users.

[–] nuko147@lemm.ee 1 points 6 days ago

For some people sarcasm is a unknown thing.